


down in the archives collection

by Flammenkobold



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Angst, Drabble, Drabble Collection, Gen, Horror, Inktober, Manipulation, Writing Exercise
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-02
Updated: 2017-10-18
Packaged: 2019-01-08 07:53:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 18
Words: 1,800
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12250176
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Flammenkobold/pseuds/Flammenkobold
Summary: Several drabbles for the Magnus Archives based on the Inktober promptlist for writers. Let's see how far I get.Day 16 - Defiance. Mary Keay and the Institute.Day 17 - Jubilant. An Axe, a table and a hopeful archivist.Day 18 - Waiting. Something's lurking in the dark.





	1. Searching

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tim and Martin looking for clues.

“We’ve been looking for days,” Tim complains. “There aren’t any clues, Martin.”

Martin sighs, deeply frustrated, pulling up another blood-spattered statement box.

“There might be,” he insist. Tim isn’t convinced at all. “Just, please Tim, one more?” he pleads, pulling out a new file, holding it out for Tim to take.

Tim curses and rubs his forehead, but takes the file from Martin’s hands. “Fine.” Martin smiles brightly at him. Or at least he tries, but it’s far too tired and brittle. “Just get me a cup of tea, will you.” The tea might not help his headache, but perhaps making it will cheer Martin up a bit.

“Sure, of course!”

“And bring some biscuits,” Tim calls after him and opens the file. Martin insists that they might find clues regarding John’s disappearance in one of them. Tim isn’t so sure, but it’s not like he can to much else.


	2. Barefoot

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Martin and socks.

He used to wear no socks to bed and walk around his flat barefoot. But then Jane Prentiss attacked and he lived for months down in the archives and he kind of stopped. There was a period when he even wore shoes; during the days trapped in his own flat, the first few nights down beneath the Institute. The thought of stepping on  _ something _ makes him shudder. He still doesn’t like the feeling of socks on his feet during the night. His feet get itchy and too warm most of the time, but the alternative would be worse, Martin guesses.


	3. Warmth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Martin and a tea pot

Martin clasps his fingers around the heated porcelain of the tea pot. It’s an old one and used to be part of a set, an heirloom from his grandmother, but most of the other pots have been broken in one way or the other. This one only lost it’s handle at one point, but Martin had glued it back on as best he could at thirteen. The place where it broke is still visible and feels coarse under his fingertips. The warmth of the tea seeps through into his cold fingers, almost scalding them. 

At least his hands stopped shaking.


	4. Compliment

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day 4 - Compliment. Elias gives Martin one.

Elias eyes the plan for the Archives critically. They’re down two people, one of them a missing Archivist, but statements are still coming in and the mess Gertrude left, purposefully Elias suspects, needs to be sorted as well. Martin has made a rough plan on what is best tackled when and is watching him reading over it. He’s radiating nervousness and shuffling his feet. Elias notes that his time estimates are a bit too high, but he is very sure that this is on purpose. 

Neither Martin or Tim have mentioned the dead body in the Archives and Elias has no intention on bringing it up. If the archival staff deals with these things, as they should, the less he has to. There was a reason he picked these people for the new Archivist. They might be disposable but they always fulfill a purpose and Elias can’t help but notice that Martin is really growing into his role.

“Well done, Martin,” he tells him and hands him back the piece of paper. “I think you and Tim should go ahead with this.”

“Really?” Martin blinks at him in surprise and then clears his throat. “I mean, thank you? We will!”  


	5. Fallen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day 5 Fallen - Someone has questions for the Archivist.

Have you fallen from grace, Archivist? Have you lost your way? Tell me, are you running away from your master or towards him? I’d really like to know. Either way, you won’t escape. The blood and carnage and the dark are still waiting for you. Even if you’re not longer it’s iris. Running won’t protect you from what is coming for you. It will be even easier if you no longer have it’s protection. And what is an eye that cannot see? What can it behold without any sight? In the end, your master will fall too, sooner or later.


	6. Water

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day 6 Water - Antonia and the ocean

Antonia has avoided the ocean for some time, but it’s like a siren’s song to her, so she cannot stay away forever. It’s calling to her, the rhythm of the waves, the glittering sun on the surface, the promise of something  _ more  _ in the deep. More even than that thing she saw down there. It sings in her blood, through her veins, all the way to her heart. The terror is still there, it will never go away, or it has always been there and she just ignored it for too long. 

But the call of the water is stronger.


	7. Confusion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day 7 Confusion - Martin and John talk.

“What?” Martin asks.

“You’ve heard me, Martin,” Jonathan says, exasperation seeping through his rapidly dwindling patience.

“Yeah, I mean I did, I’m just- are you serious right now?”

He pinches the bridge of his nose. “Deadly serious,” he says darkly, trying for some fatalistic humour. 

“That’s  not- that’s not even funny!”

“I’m wildly aware of that!” Jonathan snaps.

“Are you? Really?” Martin snaps back and that floors Jonathan. It seems like isn’t the only one on edge. He takes a deep breath, tries to calm himself down.

“I’m sorry, Martin. And yes I am serious.”

“Okay,” Martin says quietly, “okay.


	8. Impasse

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day 8 Impasse - Elias Bouchard and Gerard Keay find themselves at an impasse.

“It seems, Mr. Keay, that we’re at an impasse,” Elias says and looks like he swallowed something disgusting. 

“Seems that way, Mr. Bouchard” Gerard says calmly, watching Elias and the eyes looking back at him. Not Elias human ones, but the other ones that most people can’t see. They will not let him harm Elias. 

He feels other eyes watching him as well, studying him greedily. It’s not a new feeling and something he has gotten used to, almost comfortable even. They will not see harm come to him either. He is, after all, as much theirs as Elias is. 


	9. Strings

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day 9 - Strings. A tiny spider catches something.

It feels the miniscule movement on its net. The tug on the strings it spun to catch prey. The creature caught is wriggling, getting caught even more with every attempt to break free. It’s singing out to the others of its kind, but the net catches the smallest sounds, drowns it out with its own music. The small thing caught in its net is silvery and definitely not welcome here. This here is its place and even it is only here on loan, on a promise of warmth and dry air in exchange for protection, for a warning in time.


	10. Honor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day 10 - Honor. A guide, a forest, a lost wanderer.

“Are you sure this is the right way?” he says, eyeing the trees around them critically. They’ve been walking around for hours. The initial path they took long gone. In a brochure he read it’s safer to hire someone to guide him through the forest, as it is easy to get lost here. He did just that, but he still feels lost. It’s like they’ve been going around in circles for some time.

“By my honor as a guide,” the man says, smiling reassuringly. His teeth are white, almost shining in the rays of the slowly setting sun, and big.


	11. Seasons

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day 11 - Seasons. Leitner and a way to tell the difference between seasons when you're stuck underground

Sweets are a good indication for the current season, Jurgen finds, when you don’t have the weather to rely on. Or anything else. There are people that say there isn’t so much difference between summer and winter anyway in London, but one thing he learned while living underground is that there indeed is. Flowers and plants and birds and insects. It does vary between the seasons. The fauna and flora of his hideouts does not so much. So he tends to rely on chocolate bunnies and santas and Halloween candy and the lack of Mon Cheri next to his calendar.


	12. Instrument

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day 12 - Instrument. A calliophone in artifact storage

It’s sitting there in what they call the artifact storage, but which is nothing more than an extension to the Archives. A place to study and record and watch. A place to record so meticulously that all power is seeped from something. It’s lid is closed, for now rendered silent.


	13. Foolish

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day 13 - Foolish, Sasha thought.

Foolish to go into artifact storage. Foolish to call out to the thing she saw in the shadows. Foolish, foolish Sasha, she thinks, right before a scream is torn from her throat. She always hated it here, down in artifact storage. She should have know better. She didn’t.

 

_ Foolish Sasha. _


	14. Haunted

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day 14 - Haunted. Tim used to think the institute was.

He used to think the Institute was haunted. Ghosts living in between the old walls, walking down creaking, wooden staircases, shuffling books in the library and haunting the Archives. Perhaps old researches who died of boredom or a heart attack. Or remnants attached to the statements and artifacts dragged into the Institute. Just another case of Smirke’s architecture with a predilection for attracting the paranormal. An old house with a history. It was one of the things that drew him here in the first place, the thrill of something weird.  

But it was so much worse than that, wasn’t it? 


	15. Intimacy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day 15 - Intimacy. Martin knows this building.

The moment he steps into the Institute it’s like a weight has been lifted. The constant feeling of being watched settles over him, almost possessive. He hadn’t even realized how much he’d missed this, someone looking over him. He’s saver here, he knows, saver than in his flat. Maybe not forever, but at least for a bit longer. He trails his fingers along the walls as he makes his way down into the Archives, feels the familiar stone under his hands, welcoming him like an old friend. He knows this building by now, but it knows him in turn too.


	16. Defiance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day 16 - Defiance. Mary Keay and the Institute.

The day she walks out of the Institute she holds her head high. She doesn’t look down at Elias or Gertrude, she just doesn’t look at them at all. They can keep their musty old secrets. These boring things they consider sacred. She’s lost all respect for their institution the day she first set a foot into these walls. Boring and trite and stuck in old structures. To think the Archives of the Magnus Institute ever wanted to lay claim to her, wanted her to serve it. 

Oh she’ll serve the Beholding, but she’ll do it in her own ways.


	17. Jubilant

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day 17 - Jubilant. An axe, a table, a hopeful archivist.

He swings the axe high and impacts with a loud crunch on the table, causing a surge of satisfaction to run through him. If he can do nothing else, he will ensure that this creature is going to hurt, that it will never harm anyone else again. The second blow impacts and parts of wood fly across the room. A wooden splinter gets caught in the crease of his trousers. He lifts the axe again and lets it fall down, tearing away one of the legs. It feels good to do  _ something _ .

The horror of his mistake catches up later.


	18. Waiting

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day 18 - Waiting. Something's lurking in the dark.

Most don’t see it. There in the shadows, hidden away from the light. There are a few unfortunate beings who do. But it’s wise to never look too closely at what is lurking in the dark. It’s waiting there, watching silently. Biding its time. Like a spider in a web.


End file.
